Excellent!
It's funny how different it is paying cash money compared to when something is rolled up into a financing package. She immediately saw the disconnect and agreed to reevalute our plans.
And this is exactly why dealerships do it. Step one is to get someone to glaze and spit out a monthly payment they want ("up to..." for an extra $50 - no point in giving someone less than the maximum payment they're willing to take on), and then the dealership "makes it happen" - working all variety of "financing math" behind the scenes to bend you over to the maximum extent they think they can get away with. As soon as you're working in the land of monthly payments, they have all the advantages, the buyer has none.
Also, we will pay cash. I am certain that paying cash will, on its own, dramatically reduce the amount of money we would spend on a car.
It will also drive you up the wall if you look at dealerships for used vehicles - not the best option always, but sometimes they'll have what you want. Good luck getting a salesman to work in terms of absolute price. It's funny how hard some of them refuse to do it. I've walked out of dealerships still not knowing how much money they wanted for a car.
I also challenged myself to look at cars that were cheaper than what I would normally consider. I started looking at used cars and realized that there were plenty of used vehicles that had top safety pick ratings and good fuel economy in a price range that frankly surprised me. Not $5K...but way cheaper than I was originally considering as my baseline.
Mmhmm.
So, instead of asking ourselves "what car do we want?" we will ask ourselves "how much is our budget" and only when we have a firm answer on that, will we start looking. It's funny, when I asked the wife "how much is our budget", her answer was "well, it depends on what kind of car we want." Problem identified - and budget is now established.
Rewinding a step further, the proper question to ask before "How much is our budget?" is "What do we need a car to do, what do we want a car to do, and what is silly?"
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/12/08/turning-a-little-car-into-a-big-one/ being relevant here.
For us, when we were looking at replacing cars with an electric or semi-electric, reasoning was more or less this:
We wanted inexpensive-to-run transportation for my wife and two kids (and sometimes me, either with them or alone) that's significantly electric, and can handle the common case. Insulating ourselves from the gas prices is a nice perk, as power is cheap out here - but I also wasn't willing to spend obscene amounts of money on a car. Our car doesn't have to do everything - we have a "capable of just about everything we could ever want to do" truck that is part of the fleet, and that allows us to not worry about the week or so in the winter when we're under a lot of snow, or mountain roads, or various other things we do - the truck can cover it. However, I also didn't want to have to take the truck on long trips. Taking a 12mpg truck on a long highway trip instead of a 30-40mpg car chews up the savings in a big hurry (and let's not discuss what a set of truck tires runs).
Given the cost of long range BEVs, the option was either "Add a short range BEV to the existing fleet," or "Get a PHEV." A Prius would have worked, but is (comparatively) a gas guzzler - lots of the trips are 20-30 mile round trips.
Fitting car seats wasn't optional. I'd originally not considered the Gen 1 Volt because it's regarded as having a tiny back seat. The Gen 2 fit the car seats fine, but after test fitting in a Gen1, I realized we could make one work - and the battery range being less than the Gen2 isn't a big deal. We use the gas motor a tiny bit more often than a Gen2 would, but not enough to matter - and not enough to make up for the price difference between the two.
Based on all that, we started looking around for a Gen1 Volt, and traded the Mazda 3 in on it. I paid a bit more for the transition than I was hoping to, but it was within the range of sane (about $2500 to switch over, including tax), and gives us cheap, somewhat resilient transportation that covers the common case very nicely.
I'm old enough now (late 30s) that I don't particularly care
what I drive - as long as it does what I need a vehicle to do. My "daily driver" (for the few times a week I'm into town solo) is a 2005 Ural - a Russian motorcycle with a sidecar. It's hysterically fun, a total gutless wonder, and covers my desire for something unique.
But when that lease is over.... cash purchase of a used vehicle will be the order of the day. Actually, the goal is going to be to go down to one vehicle, and I'm confident I can do it. the wife isn't so sure, but we'll see.
Consider an electric bike as a second car. They're massively capable.